Mary Stevenson Cassatt .......Mary Stevenson Cassatt was an American painter and printmaker. She lived most of her life as an adult in France, where she first became friends with Edgar Degas and later with the Impressionists, who were a group of people who were rejected. Cassatt often created images of the social and private lives of women, with particular push on the strong bonds between mothers and children. She was described by Gustave Geoffroy in 1894 as one of "les trois grandes dames" of Impressionism on behalf of Marie Brecquemond and Berthe Morisot.
.......Cassatt was born in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, which is now part of Pittsburgh. She was born into an upper-middle-class family: her father, Robert Simpson Cassat (later Cassatt), was a successful stockbroker and land speculator, and her mother, Katherine Kelso Johnston, came from a family with generations of bankers. Katherine Cassatt, educated and very well read, had a profound influence on her daughter.To that effect, Cassatt's lifelong friend Louisine Have Meyer wrote in her diary: "Anyone who had the privilege of knowing Mary Cassatt's mother would know at once that it was from her and her alone that Mary inherited her ability." The ancestral name had been Cossart. Cassatt was a distant cousin of artist Robert Henri. Cassatt was one of seven children, of which two died as a child. Her family moved to the East, first to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, then to the Philadelphia area, where she began schooling at the age of six (6).
Mary Stevenson Cassatt
.......Mary Stevenson Cassatt was an American painter and printmaker. She lived most of her life as an adult in France, where she first became friends with Edgar Degas and later with the Impressionists, who were a group of people who were rejected. Cassatt often created images of the social and private lives of women, with particular push on the strong bonds between mothers and children. She was described by Gustave Geoffroy in 1894 as one of "les trois grandes dames" of Impressionism on behalf of Marie Brecquemond and Berthe Morisot.
.......Cassatt was born in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, which is now part of Pittsburgh. She was born into an upper-middle-class family: her father, Robert Simpson Cassat (later Cassatt), was a successful stockbroker and land speculator, and her mother, Katherine Kelso Johnston, came from a family with generations of bankers. Katherine Cassatt, educated and very well read, had a profound influence on her daughter.To that effect, Cassatt's lifelong friend Louisine Have Meyer wrote in her diary: "Anyone who had the privilege of knowing Mary Cassatt's mother would know at once that it was from her and her alone that Mary inherited her ability." The ancestral name had been Cossart. Cassatt was a distant cousin of artist Robert Henri. Cassatt was one of seven children, of which two died as a child. Her family moved to the East, first to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, then to the Philadelphia area, where she began schooling at the age of six (6).